What My Business Card Will Say About Me

After looking at a few business cards in my last post, I've been thinking over the past few days about what my business card should say about me, and how I should try and use it to distinguish myself.

How I Reached My Concept

This Christmas my younger sister who I don't live with was given a fish tank for, as she always enjoyed seeing the fish that I kept whenever she saw me at my house before I came to university. 

After Christmas dinner, as everyone else in the family was asleep, my dad and I were setting up the tank for her as she distracted the dog. But it dawned on me just how much I know about how to keep fish, which, is a lot harder than it seems, as was the basis of some of my projects last year after the christmas project (brief 3 and brief 4 in OUGD405).

I was initially interested in fish because of their pretty colours and patterns, which is why I think this is a valid thing to base by brandings concept around, but now my understanding of the subject is something that is quite niche and interesting is something I could use to distinguish myself. 

It is important however that the design of the branding remains the important thing, as this would promote me primarily as a designer and secondly as someone who knows about fish, which is what the aim is.

My Concept In Detail

When setting up a tank and buying decorations and ornaments in detail it's important to consider how much room the fish need to swim in, and so it's important to consider the tank as a background, mid-ground and a foreground sou you don't end up putting a massive plant in the middle of the tank, which would reduce the swimming area greatly, as the diagrams below show.

If you consider this as a birds eye view of a tank, the green areas show tall plants, the grey show mid-height ornaments such as a skull or a shipwreck etc, the brown ones show small ornaments such as rocks. Positioning things randomly like this gives 3 main areas for fish to swim (shown by the red arrows), but two of those would be hidden from view by the plants, so you'd hardly even see them.

Establishing a foreground, mid-ground and background allows you to position the ornaments to give the fish much bigger areas to swim in, as well as making them more visible. This is done by putting the bigger things in the background, keeping the foreground empty, and using the mid-ground for anything else.

Understanding how this works and thinking about it in order to get the best result is very similar to understanding layout, grid and hierarchy in design and how they can lead your eye around a page, which is something we looked at in quite some detail last year.

The fact that I've been able to identify this similarity suggests to me that I know enough about it to make this concept work well, so this is something I'm going to look at moving forward.